Just wanted to chime in with my -wow- fantastic! It really was worth the wait, and I have not even finished it yet.

One point- and maybe it is only me- but THAT advert for the other horror mag really irritates me. I read Interzone/Black Static to get away from the mainstream overuse of 'sexy' as an advertising staple. Also that is a particulary cheap looking advert anyway. I would go so far as to say I would pay double for another copy of the mag, with the ad removed/replaced obviously, call it a collectors edition and you got yourself a sale. And I am a cheap penny pinching student.

It's not just you, GB. I'm really sorry about it, I was apologising from the moment I saw it. There was never any question that I wouldn't honour the agreement, but I like to think that if we'd made the agreement before the issue was just about to go to press I would have politely asked them to make something different, something that I thought might improve the reception from Black Static readers and look a bit less dislocated in the process. There just wasn't time. It was a swap ad, and for all I know the Black Static ad will go down just as badly, so I mean no disrespect to my colleagues. We live and learn.

First off, I thought the entire concept and re-ish-launch of the magazine is superb. There's a real feel-good factor in picking it up - and whilst I've subscribed to Interzone since Andy took it over I've hardly made time to read any of those issues, whereas with Black Static it went to the top of the reading pile straightaway. And I wasn't disappointed either!

Just taking the fiction, "Bury The Carnival" is an excellent opener. Moody, intriguing, well-developed, sinister - exactly what Black Static should be all about in my opinion. A classy, involving story that I loved to bits.

I was less impressed with "Pale Saints and Dark Madonnas". The themes seemed a little well-worn and tired; boring perhaps; but after this blip "Acton Undream" comes at you like a runaway train (bit of a well-worn and tired metaphor of course!). I thought this was an excellent story, and enjoyed the quirky science and the unbelievability (and the desire to believe) of the plot.

There's another blip with "Votary" which, although well-written, had an 'I've seen this all before' feel to it; then another hit with "My Stone Desire" which belies it's shortness with the amount of depth and characterisation in such few words. Finally, "Lady of the Crows" is another stunner. A dark, delightful, perfectly pitched story - and I was so grateful for the ending. It's always wonderful to read horror where everyone doesn't die as the curtain comes down!

Just wanted to add my impressions of Black Static #1, even if they are a few months late. All the reviewing for the Fix has meant I'm behind on reading for pleasure, but that's another story. I thought the look and feel of the magazine were sufficiently different to TTA as to immediately establish a new identity, despite the familiarity of the columns. Pete Tennant's Case Notes reviews were uniformly excellent, as always, and it was intresting to compare his thoughts on Scott Smith's 'The Ruins' with my own impressions as I'd just read it over the summer. He hit the nail right on the head with his observation about the way the book was marketed - as a thriller, rather than the horror novel which it is.

There were two great stories - Simon Avery's and Tim Casson's - and one truly outstanding piece: Daniel Bennett's 'Acton Undream' which, as I think Andrew Hook noted above, comes at you like a hurtling train. Naturally, dealing as it does with dreams, its a brilliiantly surreal piece, but whereas a lot of this kind of fiction, while impressing with their inventiveness and stylistic manoeuvres frequently falter when representing the human aspect, Bennett's tale deals with real - if slightly odd - characters and packs a real emotional punch at the end.

I might have something to say on issue 2 by the time issue 4 comes out.

OK, so I am running a few months later than everyone else, a spot of cash-flow problems meaning I've only just been able to purchase Black Static, but here's this long-time Interzone/no-time TTA reader's thoughts:

'Bury The Carnival' - a decent strong opener, and a nice variation on the Pinocchio story. My only suprise is that I had been expecting Black Static to be more full on horror fiction, and there doesn't appear to be anything in this fantasy story (complete with happy ending) that would appear out of place in Interzone. Of course, ultimately the fact it's a decent story makes questions of genre irrelevant, but it will be interesting in the future to see how the two magazine's seperate themselves (or not) in terms of style - will Interzone be all space opera and hard SF now?

'Pale Saints & Dark Madonnas' didn't really do anything for me. Plenty of presumably accurate geographical and cultural background, but the plot exposition seemed rather clumsy, with the drama never really coming to life. I wasn't entirely enamoured of some of the author's stylistic devices either. The author's stylistic devices either....

'Acton Undream' was much better. The Mr Picky side of me wishes the plotting was slightly more rigorous - we go from vague half-explored musings on creating things in dreams to the flipside with little or no clarification of how the process works - if I dream of Scotland tonight does Scotland just suddenly vanish? Ultimately however the quality of the writing means this doesn't really matter that much, a delightfully bizarre sequence of imagery, with a pleasantly unsettling ending.

'Votary' - short and sweet pure horror. It may be a slight piece plot-wise, but it was a perfectly executed excercise in disturbing prose.

'My Stone Desire' was a slightly baffling misfire, like an unfinished idea or an offcut, rather than a finished story. Somewhere supposedly there is some sort of link between missing person's and a bridge, but the idea's never really gell into a whole, and it's difficult to judge just what the author was intending here.

'Lady of the Crows' felt like perhaps the most traditional horror story with it's slow (perhaps slightly too slow) build-up, but this was still a good solid effort, and again the magazine throws me a curve ball with a more upbeat ending.

All in all a pretty damn fine first issue, with only two of the six stories not really finding their mark with this reader, and the non-fiction was almost uniformly impressive.

As for THAT advert, I will admit that it's both cheesy and baffling (if a woman in her underwear is saying 'want some?' I would expect her to be offering erotica, not horror - wheres the link?), but the idea that some readers sensibilities would be so offended they would offer to pay more for an advertless issue really made me chuckle!

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